Terror has no religion

Terror has struck France for the second time this year,
The January attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris was first. Charlie Hebdo journalists a lesson for drawing a cartoon of Prophet Muhammad. The attack did not seem to have a great deal of pre-planning, the targets were specific, and the aim limited. The 13/11 Paris attack is large-scale killing, targeted against the general public; intended to spread terror and to convey that the French would pay for their war efforts in Syria right inside the French heartland.

This shows two things. One, the geopolitical developments in West Asia and Afghanistan post-9/11, and in the backdrop of the Iraq war, have had deadly implications for the West. And two, while organisations that carry out these attacks have changed over time, the pattern and modus operandi[mow-dus ,ow-pe'ran-dee(processor,कार्य प्रणाली)] of these attacks have remained unchanged.

For the Western countries, this means that their foreign policies would now have consequences[kón-si-kwun(t)s(result,परिणाम)] — both in terms of their citizens being targeted within the safety of their own countries, as well as the domestic political implications.

Within the West, France has become a major target of the Islamist terror outfits, especially the Daesh, for a number of reasons. For one, France has been at the forefront of the ongoing operations against the Daesh in Syria And two, while France has one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe.

A significant, and seemingly successful, modus operandi of contemporary jihadi terrorism is to get the ideologically inclined to virtually ‘sign up’ for the jihadi cause and outsource the staging of attacks to these individuals and groups without direct links to the organisational structures of the terror group.

Root of terror

It is unfashionable today to talk about ‘root causes’ when discussing strategies to counter terror: the immediate reaction is to declare a war on terror. There is only so much we can achieve by using force against apocalyptic[u,pó-ku'lip-tik(destructive,विनाशकारी)] ideologies, and that is precisely why getting to the root causes of the financial, political and ideological ecosystem that sustains the global jihad is extremely important.

Clearly, the ill-conceived[il'kun-seevd(misguided,भटका हुआ)] war on terror is coming back to haunt the West, and the Paris attack is a direct fallout.

So let’s hope the French President does not mean to start a war on terror like the one George W. Bush started in 2001, but they should also accept moral responsibility for the unjustifiable destruction of West Asia leading to the annihilation[u,nI-u'ley-shun(destruction,विनाश)] of established state structures in many countries that have made terrorism a cottage industry in the region.

The carnage[kaa-ni(slaughter,हत्याकांड)] in Paris should not be allowed to accentuate[ak'sen-choo,eyt(emphasis,stress,जोर देना)] the refugee crisis in Europe.

Daesh is a clear and present danger to India, a stark reality our government does not seem to have woken up to. We should, therefore, address this threat before it decides to focus on us. Our technological, material and human resource preparedness to deal with terror continues to be abysmal[u'biz-mu(worsen,ख़राब)] , and the government’s preoccupation does not seem to go beyond branding a particular community as being more “soft on terror”.

more importantly, the ruling BJP government in New Delhi should send out the correct political message that terror has no religion.

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